Terrible ceiling.
According to media reports, on November 17, 2021 local time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that it found 5 frozen vials marked with the word "ceiling". The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are urgently investigating the matter.
Since the declaration of smallpox virus eradication, smallpox virus samples preserved in laboratories around the world have been destroyed or transferred to two laboratories under WHO supervision that store and process smallpox virus – the CDC Main Laboratory in Atlanta, USA, and the National Center for Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR Institute) in Kolizovo, Russia.
The World Wide Biosafety Rating (BSL) standard was established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and research on smallpox virus should be conducted at BSL-4, the highest protection laboratory
Although after thousands of years of struggle, humanity finally announced the eradication of smallpox virus in 1980, this is not the first time that an unidentified sample of smallpox virus has been found outside an authorized laboratory, which is like a time bomb that reminds us not to forget the terrible killer.
Although it really looks like a marshmallow
But please be sure not to have that kind of association (picture: one map network)
Mystery visitors
We don't know where the smallpox virus came from, but a suspected smallpox rash found on an Egyptian mummy suggests that humans may have been fighting the smallpox virus for more than 3,000 years.
The earliest written descriptions of smallpox epidemics appeared in China in the 4th century AD, while early written descriptions appeared in India in the 7th century and Asia Minor in the 10th century.
Ge Hong recorded in the "Elbow Reserve Emergency Fang" that the result of the attack on Nanyang in Jianwu (25-56 AD) was called "sores", which meant that the smallpox virus may have entered China with the war in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty
The earliest smallpox outbreaks may have occurred in ancient Egypt. During the Sui and Tang dynasties in China, the smallpox virus entered the Korean Peninsula and Japan along with trade; in the 7th century, Arab expansion spread smallpox to North Africa, Spain, and Portugal; and the medieval Crusaders brought smallpox further back to Europe.
Hundreds of years later, European colonists and the African slave trade introduced smallpox to the Americas; in the 18th century, British explorers brought smallpox to Australia. So far, this disease with a mortality rate of up to 30% has spread all over the world.
Researchers believe that the erosion of a large area of his face is caused by smallpox, and it is most likely to die of smallpox infection (Ramses V Mummy Picture: One Map Network)
In ancient times, once smallpox was acquired, most of the time it could only be resigned to fate. Severely ill patients usually die within 3 to 5 days, usually due to uncontrollable toxemia or heavy bleeding.
There are also times when the smallpox virus can wreak havoc at the tissue layer or deep in the skin, and patients die within 10 to 14 days of developing symptoms. In contrast, patients with benign infections have lesions that are confined to the epidermis, which usually heals well.
Pustules throughout the body bleed and drain pus as soon as they are touched
Even if it heals, it will leave permanent scarring
Patients usually do not want to die (Figure: One Map Network)
American Killers
Like all potent infectious diseases, the spread of smallpox has profoundly affected human history:
The plague that prevailed in the Roman Empire in the late 2nd century AD was considered smallpox, and this plague that lasted for more than twenty years caused tens of millions of population losses in the Roman Empire, and it was difficult to restore its former glory after the plague.
The worst smallpox epidemic in history was the Great Plague of Antony, which is said to have killed 2,000 people a day, and corpses were scattered all over the field.
"Angels" are all here to receive their lives (Photo: One Map Network)
Although the Spaniards of the 16th century had a technological advantage when they first arrived in the Americas, if it were not for the invasion of smallpox, it would not have caused the collapse of Indian society in a short period of time.
Faced with heroic warriors who died of unknown diseases, the Indians brought them back with shrouds, and dirty blankets further helped spread smallpox (Photo: One Picture Network)
In 1661, the Shunzhi Emperor, who was suffering from smallpox, followed the advice of the German missionary John Tang on his deathbed and chose Xuan Ye, who had received smallpox and survived, to inherit the throne, a decision that also had a huge impact on the direction of Chinese history.
The Kangxi Emperor turned out to be Zhang Mazi's face! (Photo: One Map)
But if you want to judge the most influential event, there is no doubt that smallpox came to the Americas in 1520 with the colonization of Europe. Throughout the Americas, diseases brought by Europeans spread from one tribe to another, and it is estimated that various diseases such as smallpox that followed Europeans to the New World killed 90 percent of the Native American population.
Columbus' four voyages to and from the Americas
It's the key to open Pandora's Box
(Source: Britannica Kids)
Colest was able to crush the Aztec Empire with a few hundred men; Pizarro easily conquered the Inca Empire with just over a hundred soldiers, and in addition to the generational difference of civilization, the smallpox virus also played a huge role as a secret weapon.
The Aztecs were brave and warlike but also ferocious and brutal
There is a tradition of sacrificing prisoners of war and Gentiles (Photo: One Map Network)
The inhabitants of the Old World had struggled with smallpox for thousands of years and had antibodies in their bodies to a greater or lesser extent, while the Indians had never been exposed to the smallpox virus before and had almost zero resistance to it. Some scholars believe that in the 100 years since Columbus discovered the Americas, the population of major American countries such as Aztecs and Incas has plummeted from 20 to 30 million to 2 million, mainly because the Indians have almost no resistance to smallpox and other diseases from the Old World.
Columbus: Yes, it's me again! (Photo: One Map)
When the Indians discovered that not only were their weapons inferior to those of the Europeans, but that various mysterious diseases seemed to kill only the Indians, but spared the Europeans, the inexplicable sense of despair caused the Indians to collapse the last psychological defenses—they thought they had been punished by the gods, and that the European conquests in the Americas had gone far more smoothly than elsewhere.
Who has the heavens spared? (One Map)
Elsewhere, chieftains in the Mississippi River Basin disappeared between the 16th and the early 17th century, even before europeans established their first colonies in the Mississippi River region; a smallpox epidemic in 1713 destroyed South Africa's indigenous San; in 1788, shortly after the British emigrated to Sydney, an epidemic quickly devastated the indigenous people of Australia... Similar epidemics have recured in Tonga, Hawaii and other Pacific islands.
The stick longbow is inferior to the long gun and the short cannon
But the most evil disease is to kill people without blood (picture: one map network)
Some countries often boast that they have brought advanced civilizations to the world, but most ignore the other things they bring with them and destroy the indigenous peoples of many regions. It is no exaggeration to say that after the advent of the Great Navigation Age, it is not only a history of human exchanges and integration, but also a history of tragic disasters for some nationalities.
Defeat smallpox
In the process of fighting smallpox, people are also gradually groping for reliable solutions.
Probably as early as the Northern Song Dynasty, Chinese began to use human pox vaccination to prevent smallpox. By the middle of the Ming Dynasty, human pox techniques had been widely used. The technology began in the 17th century AD, and spread to Russia, Korea, Japan, Arabia and Europe, and Africa, and was introduced to Britain in 1717 AD.
The most common human pox vaccination is to grind the cruscum of a cured smallpox patient into a powder and then blow it into the nostrils of the recipient with a silver tube, or to wet the acne scab ground into powder with water and then stuff it into the nasal cavity of the recipient with a cotton wrap.
In ancient China, the nasal seedling method was used to inoculate human pox, and the water-packed cotton stuffed into the nostrils was called the water seedling method, and the long silver pipe was directly blown by the dry seedling method (source: SCMP)
Due to the treatment of these two methods, the virulence of smallpox virus is weakened, and it is less likely to cause severe illness while activating the human immune system. Human pox vaccination can also be said to be an early attempt at immunology, which laid the foundation for cowpox vaccination that was developed later.
Although human pox vaccination has played a certain role in curbing the spread of smallpox, there is still a mortality rate of about 2% after human pox vaccination, and people have been looking for safer and more reliable prevention methods.
After all, this is just a preventive means full of uncertainty, even if the child with smallpox is cured, he will leave a "hemp seed", and even be painted as a picture for circulation (Photo: One Map Network)
At the end of the 18th century, the English physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823) heard the story of a milkman who did not suffer from smallpox after contracting cowpox and decided to verify the correctness of this claim.
The future "father of immunology" immediately arrived (Photo: wiki)
In May 1796, Jenner injected an eight-year-old boy named James Philip using a substance extracted from cowpox pus cells. The child soon developed mild symptoms but soon recovered; Jenner then vaccinated him against smallpox, but the child did not suffer from smallpox. From the current point of view, this practice is indeed extremely inhumane and very risky.
Maybe no one wants to risk their lives and make a major sacrifice, but also be remembered by history as a bare ass (Jenner inoculated Philip with a statue Photo: One Map Network)
The experiment was so successful that Jenner, in his 1798 book On the Causes and Effects of Cowpox, detailed several cases of smallpox that no longer developed smallpox after vaccination.
He wrote in the book: "Cowpox and smallpox pustules are similar, and the symptoms of cowpox and smallpox are similar; the difference is that cowpox is much lighter than the symptoms of smallpox, and cowpox does not cause the death of cattle, and people suffering from cowpox do not die." ”
Europeans were first exposed to the unheard of "prevention" method of planting cowpox, thinking that after vaccination, various organs of cattle will grow on their bodies (Photo: One Picture Network)
The low risk and high success rate of the vaccinia vaccine has spread around the world for decades, and countries have begun to try to use cowpox to prevent smallpox. Over the next hundred years, smallpox was gradually brought under control. Since the activated immune system may have a lifelong resistance to smallpox, this feature offers hope of eradicating smallpox once and for all.
To commemorate the contribution of this discovery to smallpox and even the world's first vaccine, the English word "Vaccine" for the vaccine is derived from the Latin cow "Vacca" (Photo: One Picture Network)
After the end of the Second World War, while the national liberation movements were launched in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the cooperation between the countries of the world was gradually deepening. In 1959, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a program to eliminate smallpox in the world. In 1967, an intensified eradication plan began, and countries pledged to continue their efforts. Laboratories in many countries are beginning to produce more, higher-quality vaccines.
The advent of vaccines allowed the eradication of smallpox
The official battle has finally begun (Photo: One Map Network)
Previously, smallpox had been eradicated in North America (1952) and Europe (1953). The intensified eradication programme made steady progress in eradicating smallpox worldwide, and by 1971, smallpox had been eradicated in South America, followed by Asia (1975) and finally Africa (1977).
On 25 October 1977, a smallpox patient was identified in Africa, and in the next two years, no new smallpox patients were found worldwide. The World Health Organization announced the eradication of smallpox on 26 October 1979 in Nairobi, Kenya, and held a ceremony to celebrate.
The last viral host to naturally infect smallpox
— Rahema Banu (photo: wiki)
Nearly two centuries after Jenner established that a vaccinia vaccine could eliminate smallpox, the Thirty-third World Health Assembly officially declared on 8 May 1980 that the world was no longer free of the disease, considered the largest achievement in international public health ever made.
While vaccines are essential to eradicate smallpox, vaccines alone are not enough. The smallpox vaccine was first used in 1796, and it took a full 184 years for humans to declare their eradication of smallpox, and it is clear that the decisive factor in the fight against the global epidemic is global solidarity.
In 1980, the WHO officially announced the eradication of smallpox, and designated 10.25 as the day of human smallpox extinction, and smallpox became the world's first extinct human infectious disease! (Photo: WHO int.)
Source: Earth Knowledge Bureau
Author: Zi Yu
Editor-in-charge: Zheng Huaju
Proofreader: Zang Hengjia
Plate making: Xue Jiao